A technology disclosed herein relates to a method for managing a storage device, and more particularly, to a method for scanning computer virus in NAS.
NAS stands for network attached storage device, which is a storage device coupled to a network and used as shared disks by a plurality of client computers that are coupled to the network. NAS is composed of a NAS server which contains a network interface and other components, and a disk device which stores data.
As a way to avoid damage to NAS from a computer virus infection, a virus scan technology that uses a scan server has been disclosed (see JP 2004-199213 A). A scan server is a computer coupled to the network to execute a virus scan. Specifically, when the NAS server receives a file operation request from a client computer, the NAS server transfers the operation target file to the scan server. “File operation” refers to writing a file or reading a file. “Operation target file” refers to a file to be written in the disk device or a file read out of the disk device.
The scan server executes a virus scan on the transferred file, and sends the result of the scan to the NAS server in response. In the case where the transferred file is found to be infected with a virus, the scan server repairs the file and transfers the repaired file (i.e., the file free from the virus) to the NAS server. The NAS server executes the requested file operation according to a response from the scan server. Damage from a virus infection is thus avoided by performing a virus check and repairs on files handled by the NAS server.